Lily with an L
by aaliona
Summary: Peter Pettigrew has found his drunken way to into the girls' dorm, and Lily is the only one who cares enough to comfort the underappreciated boy. He tells her a little secret about James Potter. Hints at future LilyJames


**This is for the Alliteration Competition by ParadoxicallyRandom. I had the character Lily Evans with the words** **l****iquidation,**** l****umberjack, ****l****anterns, ****l****uncheon, ****l****ungs, ****l****akeside, ****l****ouse,**** l****oser, ****l****aundry-basket, ****l****ittlest, ****l****itigation, ****l****imericks, ****l****eek-soup, ****l****etterbox,**** and l****anguage. I got them all in, and some of them made it twice, while other L-words seemed to start cropping up.**

**It may about Lily and Peter, but THEY ARE NOT A COUPLE. That is all. I hope you enjoy it!**

Lily slowly made her way down the hall with her laundry basket, desperately in need of some clean clothes. She'd become so stressed out over her approaching N.E.W.T. exams that necessary tasks like doing the laundry had become insignificant, but now her closet was almost completely empty. The evil task had become unavoidable.

"Hello Marlene," Lily said pleasantly as she passed her fellow Gryffindor on her way down the girls' dormitory hallway.

"Lily," Marlene stopped her. "I really think you should have a look at what's going on in the sixth years' room."

She sighed, emptying her lungs of all air. Being head girl was a great honor, but it was filled with disadvantages. "How much have they had to drink?" she asked as she dropped her laundry basket to the floor. It was a much less pressing matter. "How out of control are they? Is the room going to need liquidation again?"

Marlene laughed. "Oh, I think you'll be surprised. The girls don't appear to have been drinking, but they might have to leave."

Having absolutely no idea what her friend was saying, Lily chose to enter without any further clues into what she would find. She never would have guessed that the five six year girls would be huddled on two beds as they stared at an obviously drunk Peter Pettigrew. Peter was crying a bit and choosing to amuse himself by transfiguring two of the empty firewhiskey bottles before him into lanterns and then back.

"Got to practice for my exams," he kept slurring to himself.

Lily closed her eyes for a moment to gather her wits about her. Upon opening them, she wheeled to face the six years and demanded, "What's going on here?"

A skinny blonde named Heather replied, "He came up to us and asked if we wanted to be risky. He reminded us that the staircase wouldn't let up boys, but he'd found a way around it. If we used him as the practice dummy, we could bring our boyfriends up all the time with no one any the wiser."

The head girl crossed her arms. "And did you?"

Heather shrank back, but Catherine spoke up from where she was sitting on another bed. "Possibly." She paused but quickly continued under Lily's stare. "He had us levitate him up. It worked, as you can see."

"So how did he get drunk?"

"We ran back down," a brunette named Peggy said. "Now that we can, we all wanted to tell our, er, friends. We kind of forgot about Peter."

Lily rubbed her eyes. "You left him up here with no way to get down and a world of punishment waiting if he got caught?"

"Well…" Peggy admitted. "Yes."

As one, the six of them looked at Peter who was now muttering to himself. "Do owls deliver post to muggles in their letterboxes?" he mused. "It would make sense. Who else would do it?"

Lily groaned internally. "I take it you found him like this."

The girls nodded quickly and Heather added, "We have no idea where he got the alcohol. There's no way it came out of that trunk." Everyone around her shook their heads even more furiously, praying that Lily wouldn't make a litigation against them to McGonagall.

It wasn't worth it, Lily decided. "If you say so. Please leave so I can take care of Peter." She received another round of bobbing heads before they were gone. Lily sighed and crouched down next to Peter. She said his name softly, and his head jerked up so as to make eye contact.

"What do you want?" he grumped. "I'm busy."

"Doing what?" she asked.

Peter sighed and slumped back against a bedpost. "Being a loser."

Lily felt a twinge of sadness at his melancholy state. "You are not a loser."

"Am too," he argued. "I'm the biggest loser in the history of the world. Actually, that would make me something. I'm the littlest."

She put an arm awkwardly around him. "What makes you think you're a loser?" she asked softly.

Peter's lip quivered. "I'm not like them," he admitted in a whisper.

"Like who?"

"My friends," he replied. "Remus, James, Sirius… I don't think they're really my friends. They probably just feel sorry for me."

"I'm sure that's not true," Lily protested, although she wondered if it was. After all, she couldn't come up with any particular reason that he fit in their little group, aside from being in the same house.

"It is," he insisted. "They're all great, but I'm just me. James and Sirius are funny, and girls find them attractive. They're like these big, well-liked lumberjacks while I'm just a lumpy, little errand boy. Plus, Remus is smart. That makes him popular too, even though he doesn't want to be. I wish I could trade places with any of them!"

"No you don't," she replied. "Yes, Remus is smart. I'll admit he was a way with the English language and is the only guy I've ever met who has perfected limericks, but he's only had two girlfriends. You've had three."

"Gina and Bethany both just wanted Sirius," he muttered, but Lily pressed on and ignored his negative comment.

"I can't even imagine wanting to be the other two. Each of them is just a big louse."

Peter appeared to be in shock. "You don't mean that!" he said.

Lily nodded. "I do. You can be as funny as you want, but when your jokes are mean and hurtful, they aren't worth the laughs. The same is true about popularity. How many of their friends are girls who want to sleep with them and guys who want to kill them for stealing all the girls?"

"They haven't stolen you," Peter pointed out.

"That's true," she agreed, "but it's not for lack of trying on James' part. I swear, if he asks me to one more lakeside luncheon-"

"You'll say yes," Peter cut in, sounding incredibly hopeful.

That threw Lily off-guard since she'd thought Peter had come to the conclusion that he had bad friends. "Why on earth would I say yes?"

"He really likes you," he replied, as if that explained everything.

"He likes a lot of girls," Lily pointed out.

Peter shrugged. "He's _liked_ a lot of girls, but right now, Sirius is getting all the action. James hasn't been on a date all year."

"But why not?" she asked in confusion.

"After years of dating other girls because he thought going after you was useless, James figured he'd have a better chance if he cleaned up his image. Didn't you notice?"

Lily thought back to the past few months. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen or heard about James with other girls since nearly St. Patty's Day of last year. Over a year was a long time for a guy like him to stay single. "That doesn't mean anything," she said.

Peter sighed. "You're right."

She blinked in confusion. "I am?"

"Yeah," he replied. "I don't want to be James. Spending so long being hopelessly in love seems like too much work."

Lily nearly verbalized her epiphany when she realized Peter's alcohol-clouded brain had jumped back about five minutes. "That's good," she encouraged. "You don't want to be Sirius either. I bet all that girl hopping takes even more work." Peter knit his brows together in confusion so Lily pressed on. "Then there's Remus. Would you really want to have his secret?"

Peter started to nod before he leaned forward suddenly. "How do you know about his secret?" he nearly yelled.

"Relax," she said. "I'm not going to tell anyone. I've overheard enough conversations between you guys to put two and two together, but his secret is safe. Not many people would be so observant."

He nodded, taking her promise to heart. "So I'm best off being me?"

"That's exactly right," Lily replied with a smile. This was why she'd become head girl. She had wanted to help people when they needed her, regardless of who they were or what they needed. "Come on." She stood up and pulled on Peter's arm to help him to his feet. "Would you like some leek soup? I'm sure if we go to the kitchen, they won't mind heating up some leftovers."


End file.
